Living Like the Locals

It is 6:00 a.m.  Taylor and I have been up since 3:00 a.m.  We just slept our 3rd night in our Airbnb apartment in the Da'an District of Taipei.  We managed to fall back to sleep the first 2 nights when we had our 3:00 a.m. wake up,  but there was a lot to do this morning.  Taylor had it in mind to mop the floor, and I had it in mind to read my novel and fix a knitting mistake.  Now we're having Nespresso made in our little Nespresso maker.

This is a nice luxury.

I know my readers are wondering about the accommodations.  Yes, we had a cleaning frenzy but it wasn't as intense as last year.  This year's frenzy was confined to the kitchen area and the rest of the apartment was very clean.  We especially appreciate the tile floors that can be swabbed up after feeding a 9 month old.  It makes for a clean environment for our precious Soup.

None of us would have allowed our boy to crawl on last year's floor.

Learning from last year's experience, I made some changes in selecting our current apartment.  One major change was to up my price limit  $600. The result is that our 2 bedroom apartment is much smaller and cleaner than the previous one. It is easier for David and Chia to come visit.  The neighborhood is fabulous.

There are two considerations that didn't occur to me to question.  The first is the Taiwanese bathroom.  I knew that there would not be a shower door, but I thought I could live with that.  However, what this means is that the bathroom is basically a shower with a toilet and a sink in it.  The floor never seems to dry. Try walking into a wet bathroom all day long.  

You can see the corner of the sink.  The toilet is just to the left of it.  You can see the drain below the shower curtain.

The second question that I never, ever thought of is, "Is there garbage service?"  Well, the situation is that in addition to doing all the sorting that we do in Portland, plus used toilet paper, we actually have to take it to the garbage trucks ourselves.  At 9:00 p.m. every night but Saturday and Wednesday we can walk 4 or 5 blocks to add our trash to the trucks (separate trucks for refuse and recycling) that come through.

We are ready for our first trip to the garbage collection sight.

Dealing with the bathroom and the trash seemed like insurmountable situations for me in my jet lagged state.  However, now that I am rested and recovered I have come to terms with both.  After all, we like to pretend that we are living like locals when we travel.  This time we have the privilege of paying a higher price to really live like the locals.